


Substitute

by Anonymous



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: M/M, Malex, Post season finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-05-16 04:25:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19310578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: It’s a body blow when your own mother—even if she’s just a voice inside your head—informs you that, in the eyes of the person you’ve fallen in love with, you’re only asubstitute.Or, Maria learns the hard way.





	Substitute

**Author's Note:**

> While I am too myopic to entertain any other possibility than Michael & Alex together forever, I guess this story explores how the destructive potential of their great cosmic love is not totally exclusive to them.

According to her mother, a person might choose the wrong partner for all sorts of reasons. _I don’t mean outgrowing a relationship that used to be good_ , her mother said, _with each person committing to the other, celebrating the other until they reach the natural end of their shared path together._ Those _people can part—with or without love—and then move on to somebody or something else._

_No,_ her mother went on, _I’m talking about people pairing up with people they don’t love and don’t want, where an outside observer—such as myself—might look in and shake her head and say that one person shouldn’t occupy such an intimate position in another person’s life if it turns out they’re the wrong person._

That was when she interrupted: “God, Mom, you’re so old-fashioned! That only applies to, like, marriage. The stakes are _not_ that high, okay? And it’s not like sex even _means_ anything anymore. You need to chill with the fate-soulmate stuff, it makes people nervous. They just want you to read their palm and tell them a tall dark stranger looms on their horizon.”

Her mother ignored the interruption. _Why would anybody knowingly choose the wrong person?_ she asked, and continued without waiting for a response: _There’s the fear of being alone, absolutely. So pick anyone. He’ll do. She’ll do. Or maybe you get bullied into it. Because you have to fit in, because you’re afraid to let somebody down. Or you don’t go after the person you want because it might make somebody_ else _angry or jealous or sad. Plenty of other reasons, too. Maybe you’re protecting your independence, so you settle for somebody who won’t threaten your autonomy._

“Okay, Mom. I’ll keep it in mind.”  

_But then there’s the big one._ Her mother was really hitting her stride now. _The biggest reason for not choosing the right partner. If you chose_ that _one, the person you adore and desire who adores and desires you right back, well, what then? What if this perfect partner never falls out of love with you, or you with them, and nobody meets a freak accident and dies too young? Think about all those joyful eternities and infinities. Are you sure, are you really,_ really _sure you can cope with the prospect of forever?_

At the time—some three or four years ago—she thought the advice was meant for her. Every night at the bar, she and her mother watched people pairing off and going home together for the wrong reasons. Great and sustained happiness was rare amongst the Wild Pony’s clientele. Serving drinks and mingling with patrons, she witnessed an endless parade of people choosing each other out of doubt, out of regret, out of fear and blame and despair and also out of terrible self-sacrifice.

_Don’t follow their example_ , she thought her mother was saying. She assumed, logically enough, that she herself was the subject of all these admonishing hypotheticals _._ This is how you, _Maria_ , might choose the wrong person, and here are all the reasons why you might do so.

It isn’t until several years later—when she is behind the bar and Michael Guerin is sitting in front of it drinking whiskey and waiting for her to finish up so they can leave together, and then the door opens and Alex Manes walks in and Michael Guerin swivels to look at him, and she can see Michael Guerin has already forgotten her existence because he is staring at Alex Manes—that she realizes _she_ is the wrong person in this particular story, the expedient unknown Michael Guerin has chosen instead of his right person.

 

*

 

She didn’t get the Michael Guerin she expected.

She thought she might get the one she met in Texas, the one who led her on a merry ramble through the desert and tumbled her into the sand for some rather spectacular if undignified sex under the stars. The one who stroked her hair after she got roofied and listened to her cry over her mother.

Instead she got his doppelgänger. He looked like Michael Guerin and occasionally he even acted like him, but this version came with secrets lurking behind his eyes and when he smiled his mouth tore into a grimace. Sometimes he buzzed around her like an agitated mosquito, reminding her of how Rosa got when she went off her meds. But these manic bouts were short-lived, and soon he’d deflate again. Disappearing for hours and drinking too much and kissing her with a mouth that tasted like chemicals.

There were strange things happening all around her that she didn’t understand and that no one was bothering to explain to her, least of all Michael Guerin.

But this was _her_ love story, goddammit. It had to be. Otherwise she would have ruined her friendship with Alex for nothing.

 

*

 

Michael has risen from his bar stool.

_Maria_ _shouldn’t occupy such an intimate position in Michael’s life if it turns out Maria is the wrong person for Michael. _

Without a backward glance, he strides to the door, where Alex stands, frozen. Their shoulders bump. Maybe something is said. Then Michael goes out and, after a moment, Alex follows.

_Why would Michael knowingly choose the wrong person, i.e,. Maria? _

_Because Michael has gone and done the usual self-protecting, self-sacrificing thing_ , the voice that belongs to her mother explains. _Alex had walked away too many times and when he finally started circling back, Michael had been stretched to his limit._ _He decided he couldn’t cope with the vulnerable reciprocity of giving and receiving any longer._

“Hell of a toxic relationship,” she tells her mother, silently, as she watches the door slam shut behind them. “Clearly they’re not right for each other—”

_Michael preempted the possibility_ , her mother interposes, _to get it over with before he lost it, before it was snatched away from him again— by fate or somebody else or even Alex himself. He’s attempting to make do with a substitute instead._

It’s a body blow when your own mother—even if she’s just a voice inside your head—informs you that, in the eyes of the person you’ve fallen in love with, you’re only a _substitute._

_If you’d read his palm like I told you, you’d know this already_ , her mother admonishes. _Did you even test his aura?_

“I tried!” she protests, silently. “There was a wall around his mind!”

_I thought I raised you smarter, Maria._

 

*

 

Lonesome Cowboy Michael Guerin had a reputation for sex, in that he had a lot of it and was purportedly very, very good at it.

She could confirm this. But the Michael Guerin she got—the Michael Guerin who was purportedly over Alex Manes—came with some strange glitches in that department. He was a whole lot keener to give than to receive. At first she thought he was showing off his stamina, making her come over and over while he held back. But then when he finally did let go, his face would crumple with something that looked a lot like defeat. He didn’t want her mouth anywhere near his dick most of the time, which seemed like the kind of confused second-wave feminism that would be more in character for Max Evans, say, than Michael Guerin.

“I love eating people out,” he assured her, and something about his choice of the word _people_ struck an ominous chord somewhere in her mind even as she pushed him down and said _yeah, there, no, just a little to the left, okay, that’s perfect, yes, keep doing that—…_

Then there was the time she and Liz had driven to Santa Fe for a fancy spa weekend, and when she got home and Michael came over and started taking off her clothes, he paused with his face between her thighs. “Did you, uh. You didn’t, uh… do that for me, did you?” he said, suddenly all frowns and knitted brows.

“I did it for _me_!” she snapped, instantly on the defensive. Because he did that sometimes. _You’re not putting all that makeup on for me, are you? You don’t feel like you have to straighten your hair for me, do you?_ Those questions always set her off. She _liked_ the makeup and the clothes and the beauty products and the skin regimens. She took pride in the effort she put into her appearance; she had _style_. It certainly wasn’t her fault she had a momma who looked like Lisa Bonet without even trying, and what was the matter with _trying_ , anyway? Isobel Evans always looked expensive as hell; did Michael tell _her_ she didn’t need to put on mascara to buy a quart of milk from the papi store? Michael wasn’t fazed by periods and tampons and sometimes she actually wished he’d act a bit more fazed because then she could possibly salvage a few scraps of the feminine fucking mystique. 

“So what’s wrong with it?” she demanded later as she swung off his lap. She’d come twice; he’d decided he didn’t need to finish that night. She tossed the empty condom in the trash. “Why are you acting like this?”

“Nothing,” Michael said. “I’m not. Nothing’s wrong, DeLuca.”

“Most guys like it,” she pointed out sharply. “Prefer it, even.”

“I thought you said you did it for _you._ ”

“I did!” she exclaimed, frustrated. “Seriously, Guerin, what the fuck?”

He hesitated, running a hand through his tangled hair. “Whole look just seems a little… prepubescent?” he ventured at last. He reached out and cupped her breast in his rough-gentle hand, leaning in to kiss her. “You’re smokin’ as is, DeLuca. _That_ ,” he tipped his chin downwards, “kinda freaks me out, to be honest.”

“Or maybe you just don’t like what you see?” she challenged, pushing his hand away, too humiliated and angry to stop herself from saying what she said next. “Maybe you’re gay, Guerin.”

Instantly the veil came down behind his eyes. “I’m not gay,” he said quietly, and all the warmth and affection and humor that made him Michael Guerin vanished beneath the distant, brooding mask he wore so often these days. “I’m bisexual, Maria.”

“Are you _really_ , though?” she needled him, but already she knew she’d crossed a line. “I didn’t mean that,” she whispered, closing her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m mad at you, but I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean it.”

“I don’t have anything to prove to you, or anybody,” she heard him say in that flat, dull voice. Then she felt his fingers brush his arm. “I know who I am.”  

He got up to leave then, and she wasn’t cruel enough to say _do you, do you really?_ like she wanted to; they’d probably just break up on the spot. So she coaxed him back instead, and then he finally fucked her the way she wanted him to, the Texas Way, as she thought of it, with wildness and abandon and enough force to break the bed.

 

*

 

She follows them out.

She doesn’t even think about it, just does it. There was something momentous about the way they’d looked at each other in the doorway, the lingering way Michael brushed past Alex. And Alex, stubborn Alex, had followed without hesitation. So maybe something is going to be decided tonight, something that obviously concerns her even though she obviously isn’t going to be consulted in the deciding, so she takes it as her prerogative to follow them out to the parking lot.

They’re standing by Michael’s truck, a few feet apart. She creeps closer along the side of the bar, keeping to the shadows because all the stars are out tonight and it’s not really dark enough for espionage but she doubts much could distract them from each other right now.

She decides to pretend she’s watching a movie. _Is it too late?_ she wonders with bated breath. _Has Michael ruined everything? Or is Alex going to relent and let him make amends? What’s going to happen?_

“Go back inside, to _her_ ,” Alex is saying. “Just _go,_ Guerin.”

With the apparent intention of amends, Michael doesn’t go away as ordered. Instead he steps closer and although he doesn’t touch him, he’s now speaking to Alex in an undertone, imploring him. He’s barely audible to her, but it’s clear he’s speaking without editing, without refining, without any trace of sarcasm or irony because he’s too far gone emotionally for any self-conscious evaluation. He’s saying something about “… mistake… dumbass… didn’t know what the fuck I was thinking, what I was doing… So goddamn stupid… wrong person. Because I loved you… Too afraid… hurt so much to even look at you, all my worst memories… Your dad… my mom…” His _mom_? She can’t have heard that right, Michael doesn’t have a mom, or a family. Then there’s something about how he’d compromised, how he’d settled…

“You broke my heart!” Michael shouts suddenly. “You broke my fucking heart, again and again, you made me miserable!”

“You made _me_ miserable!” Alex yells back, taking his own step closer, getting up in Michael’s face. “You made me miserable and now you’ve probably—you can’t have made her _not_ miserable! So fuck you, Michael, go away, go away—”

Alex’s hands come out and he tries to shove Michael, but Michael’s arms come up, trying to stop Alex from shoving him off. Alex tries, and Michael tries; Alex’s hands come out, Michael’s arms come up, Alex tries, then Michael tries, then Alex halts. She claps a hand over her mouth to smother hysterical giggles at the bizarre kind of dance they’re doing. Then Michael reaches out and Alex pushes him off again.

There’s minutes more of this, halting and pushing, hands coming out, arms coming up, and the occasional “go away” from Alex even though most of this dance is silent but for their labored breathing and there’s certainly no going-away happening from Michael. She reflects that it’s true, certainly, that Michael had compromised, that he had settled, become sullied, jaded, so that maybe after another few months of this, of not following his heart, of not _allowing_ his heart, he would turn back into the same buried-alive, dulled-to-death person he had been before Alex Manes returned to Roswell less than a year ago. An alcoholic, to put it another way.

“You never cared what you were doing to me all these years, so why the _fuck_ do you care what I’m doing to myself now?” Michael hollers, and his truck, which was just sitting there innocuously, suddenly rears up on its hind wheels like a bucking bronco, and she’s gasping in shock, cowering back against the wall, even as Alex just stands there looking completely unperturbed, and then the truck crashes back down to all fours and they carry on shouting like nothing happened. And she can’t breathe, she can’t breathe, because what the actual _fuck_ just happened—

She’s too busy trying to remember how to breathe to catch the next somethings that they say to each other, but whatever they say is followed by more pushing from Alex. Then Alex takes hold of Michael’s shirt and leans into him, almost dropping his head onto—But no! It’s a violent rejection of Michael’s shirt, now flapping half-open from Alex’s tearing hands, a rejection of _Michael_ , then further pushing from Alex… But then Alex grabs the shirt again, stepping close, closer, closer. Then he half-collapses into Michael’s waiting arms and leans against him, already at home against his heart. She watches the two of them shut their eyes and Alex breathe Michael into him and Michael breathe Alex into _him_ , his lover, ex-lover, his lover…

Ordinarily she might have been shocked, appalled, at the thought of anyone—especially herself—standing feet away from and shamelessly watching two overwrought, emotional lovers push and pull at each other. But she’s become riveted to the spot, can’t stop herself, doesn’t want to stop herself and besides, they started it and are continuing it. And just like how at middle school dances the teachers would move between the grinding couples and admonish them to _leave room for Jesus_ , shouldn’t Michael and Alex have left room for _Maria_ , because she is the other person involved in this—… But no, Michael and Alex have definitely not left room for Maria.

Michael has his arms around Alex even as he, Michael, says, “I think I hate you.” She almost laughs when he says that, because “I think I hate you” is the same as “I _probably_ don’t hate you” which is the same as “I don’t know if I hate you” which is the same as “I don’t hate you, oh my god, my love, I love you, the love of my life, I still love you, always, always have I loved you and nobody but you and never have I stopped loving you.”

Alex finally takes his face out of Michael’s chest and both of them cease their activity. There is a second of nothing, a blip of suspension, then they fall—no more talk, no more dramatics—with relief into each other’s arms.

They’re kissing now, tightly embracing; Michael, bending Alex over, supporting his weight as the bad leg gives out—and Alex, stubborn Alex, arms around his neck, letting Michael hold him, letting him support him, letting him swoop him back like that, until Michael is practically kissing him backwards off his feet.

It’s a long time before the kiss comes to an end. Still oblivious to their audience of one, Michael helps Alex into the passenger seat of his truck. Then he dashes around and hurls himself into the driver’s seat. He guns the engine and the old Chevy sputters to life. The truck roars out of the Wild Pony parking lot and screeches around the corner, and finally all sight and sound of her presumably now-ex-lover, reunited with his ex-ex-lover, disappears.

 

*

Being psychic is an awful curse sometimes.

All night long, she’s tormented by flashes of them together. She closes the bar, goes home and gets herself high on top of drunk, but all it does is render the contours of her mind even more permeable to disruptions from the wider psychic plane.

When Michael slams Alex against the front door of the cabin, she _feels_ it. When the kiss turns bruising, when Alex’s teeth sink into Michael’s lip, she tastes the blood. When Alex drags his hand over the front of Michael’s jeans she feels the hard outline of him under her fingers.  

She blasts her music to drown them out, but she can still hear the desperation in Michael’s voice when he begs, _fuck me Alex, please fuck me, let me fuck you, god I want you so bad, fuck me please, let me fuck you_ , and the urgency in Alex’s voice when he laughs and says, _yes, yes, I want that too._

She feels Michael’s hair under Alex’s fingers when he pulls hard enough to make Michael’s eyes water; her eyes water too and her scalp burns. She smells their sweat and the musk of sex filling the bedroom. She looks up at Michael with Alex’s eyes as Michael rides him, admiring the taut straining muscles of his arms, chest, stomach, as he flings his head back with a groan. She experiences the dizzying euphoria of being _inside Michael_ , and reaches out to stroke his cock.

Her eyes fill with Alex’s tears when Michael pushes into him a little while later; Alex’s breath catches in her throat when Michael rolls his hips, deeper inside him than he thought possible. She feels herself cresting wave after wave of Alex’s pleasure as Michael makes love to him like he’s waited lifetimes to be inside him again, to hold him and kiss him and tell him with his whole body how much he loves him. She clings to Michael with Alex’s hands and dissolves alongside Alex into the welcoming warm oblivion of Michael’s honey-golden eyes.

She’s left curled on the floor, their happiness surging through her, even as she aches with unhappiness all her own.

_I can’t live without you_ , Michael whispers.

_Oh my love, my love._ Alex’s voice is a sleepy chuckle.

_Forever._

 

*

 

Michael turns up the next morning, hat in hand.

“I saw you leave together,” she tells him, her voice clipped. “I know.”

“Yeah.” For once his face is completely open, his posture loose and easy. “I love him, DeLuca,” he says simply. “He’s the love of my life, and there’s not a goddamn thing I can do about it.”

She doesn’t say anything.

“I wanted this to work.” Michael gestures between them. “I really wanted to start over with you; I didn’t even _want_ to be with him because it’s all so fucked up in ways you—ways you can’t even imagine.”

_I wouldn’t have to imagine if you’d ever bothered to confide in me_ , she thinks. But she doesn’t say anything.

“But… there’s no _me_ without him,” Michael says. “There’s parts of me that will always be broken, because my missing pieces are inside him, and I’ve got his pieces inside me, too.”

She doesn’t say anything.

Michael runs a hand through his hair, and those beautiful curls tumble across his forehead. “Like, you know when someone’s got shrapnel in them, but if the surgeon tries to extract it, it’ll kill them, so they just live out their lives with the fragments buried in their bones?” He sighs. “That’s me and Alex, Maria.”

“You…” She hates the wobble in her voice. “What a horrible reason to be with someone.”

“Yeah, it’s fucking terrible,” he agrees, but his eyes are sparkling and he seems positively radiant at the thought. Then he fiddles with his hat. “Saying I’m sorry doesn’t cut it,” he acknowledges.

“No.” She can’t look at him; his image is starting to ripple and blur as her eyes fill. “Don’t come around here for a while, okay Guerin?”

 

*

 

_If you choose the right partner_ , _the person you adore and desire who adores and desires you right back, well, what then?_

_What then_ indeed; that is for Michael and Alex to discover. Meanwhile, her mother had never said what became of the wrong partners, the cast-off substitutes and expedient unknowns who were shuffled off to the side after the _right_ partners had finally found each other again.

_Think about all those joyful eternities and infinities._

She hadn’t meant to love Michael; she hadn’t meant to betray Alex and create a triangle where there should have been just two points on a line. She is supposed to be _fun friend_ , the girl who is her own best savior, who doesn’t need _anyone_ to show up for her. Maybe with time she will feel a sense of relief, grateful that she still belongs to herself, as Michael and Alex burn up the night sky with their eternities and their infinities.

But that equanimity is yet to come. Now, as she gets in her car to visit her mother at the hospital for crazy people, because that’s what her mother is, a crazy person, who says crazy things and insists aliens are real— She wishes she’d hurled one last grenade at Michael’s feet, even though she knows he’s not afraid of anything, not anymore and never again—

_Are you sure, are you really,_ really _sure you can cope with the prospect of forever?_

**Author's Note:**

> Previously: WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE TEENAGE DREAM, THE LIGHT-YEARS, SATELLITE'S GONE, & so on & so forth. 
> 
> @malexhq on tumblr was awfully kind and collected links to these stories all in one post: https://malexhq.tumblr.com/post/185355532632/the-light-years 
> 
> <3


End file.
